When Will Tuckett created a dance version of The Wind in the Willows, he
wanted to keep it simple, he tells Helen Brown. It has become a
Christmas classic

Choreographer Will Tuckett knew he was “up against it” when he first staged his Wind in the Willows in the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Studio eleven years ago. “The National Theatre had just stopped running its fantastic Alan Bennett version, on the big drum revolve stage with incredible trees that ‘grew’ during the show. We had “The Nutcracker” upstairs with all the sparkly bells and whistles. But down in the new Linbury basement, there was a very limited budget. We couldn’t do any of that shiny magic.

“In a way, I didn’t want to. I had an idea to do a showthat was more like the cardboard box a toy comes in. So often the best thing about Christmas.”

Just fifteen performances were scheduled that first December. The critics were charmed and they all sold out. There were twenty shows the following year. And now Tuckett’s enchanting, lo-fi blend of song, dance, poetry and puppetry has become the Royal Opera House’s first commercial transfer to the West End, with an eight week run booked at the Duchess Theatre and Tony Robinson taking on the narrative role of author Kenneth Grahame.

As I follow the bounce of Tuckett’s grey curls through the Opera House’s the cavernous backstage area — past the glittering sleigh from The Nutcracker, and the scenery from Carmen — it’s easy to see how he came up with the idea of setting the 1908 children’s classic in an attic where the characters emerge from the dusty old furniture like memories.

“We thought,” he says,”about what it would be like to put all the toys away, then go back up the stairs and re-live them. The toys would be the ones you couldn’t bear to get rid of: Toad’s scuffed and dented motor car, Ratty’s boat. It’s about those memory bridges back to your own childhood, your children’s childhoods. It’s about letting go of childhood, and of your children. About having a care for what comes after you.”

Tuckett pauses: his own son is only four but he sees the nostalgia coming already. “We’ve always had a lot of grandparents bringing their families here. It’s interesting, sitting behind families. You watch a 7-year-old enjoying something. The parent is feeling a wrench. The grandparent is in tears.”

Will Kemp as Ratty in The Wind in the Willows (Johan Persson)

Those layers of melancholy have always been at the heart of the tale.There’s a sense in which Grahame was carefully storing away pre-war England with the book he proudly boasted was “clean of the clash of sex” and set in the gentle countryside where he sought solace after his mother died when he was five and his father sank into alcoholism. Its characters grew out of bedtime stories that Grahame told his beloved (but troubled) son, ’Mouse’, who committed suicide at 19, laying down on train tracks in that same idyllic countryside.

Much of the story’s appeal lies in the terrific animal cast. On one level, they’re rather cuddly, playground stereotypes: the shy Mole, dapper Ratty and spoiled Toad. On another, they really are wild animals. Tuckett has a vivid recollection of EH Shepard’s original illustration of Badger, snarling.

“With Will Kemp (who plays Ratty),” he says, “we talked a lot about animal behaviour. Who might be nervous of whom? Who might eat somebody? When I was first choreographing it I watched some natural history, worked out what a body could do, how to translate that into dance moves and often dispensed with it all to ask: if you were hopping about pretending to be a rabbit, how would you do it?” He raises the backs of his hands, lets his fingers drop and bares his front teeth. “Whereas a play like War Horse is about a realhorse, The Wind in the Willows is about anthropomorphised animals. These are animals wearing clothes. Toad’s in tweed. We made our Mole a girl because her costume is based on that of an Edwardian child miner I saw in a photograph. When you watch the show today you’re struck by how much the world has changed. But also, how much hasn’t changed. Child labour is still used across so much of the world.”

Badger and a helfpul rabbit in The Wind in the Willows (Johan Persson)

Some critics have complained that Tuckett’s show features more mime than dance. “You should tell that to the cast as they sweat!” he says. “Every movement of the show is very strictly choreographed, with a few moments of freedom. There’s a lot of Morris and folk tradition. But it’s not exactly a ’dance’ show. It’s a hybrid of dance, theatre and the utterly beautiful poetry by Andrew Motion, who’s written some gorgeous new lines about autumn cobwebs and trees ‘shaking out their gold’ for this production.

“ Tony Robinson came in with a book of really smart notes — he wants to be in it more, moving around the stage. We talked about whether an author is ever surprised by his characters. If he wrote this book a long time ago, does he remember everything they do?”

Transfering to the Duchess has also meant reducing the band from twelve to six musicians (playing Martin Ward’s score inspired by the Edwardian composer George Butterworth) but Tuckett has found space to keep all the stagecraft that once got one party of school children so excited they broke their seats. “So yes, Toad’s car chase will still be dashing through the foyer at the interval,” he says, “and snow will fall on the audience.”

Eleven years ago, Tuckett claims his show was the first to turn a theatre into a snowglobe in this fashion “even though lots of people have done it since”.

It’s one of those glorious, simple, cardboard box-type moments that you can only get in the theatre. No 3D, High Definition movie can tickle your skin like that. And it’s the one moment, says Tuckett, when those generational layers melt away. “For a moment,” he smiles, “everybody is a child again.”

The Wind in the Willows is at the Duchess Theatre until February 1.Tickets: 020 7304 4000; roh.org.uk